Aging
by Alamorn
Summary: Follows Yuffie and Vincent from seven years before the game to just after the defeat of Sephiroth.
1. Chapter 1

Aging

She is nine and sticky fingered and mourning for her mother as best she can. Her mother who died weeping and begging and choking on her own blood to save he. So she wears her hair short (in remembrance, but Sh! Don't tell Daddy!) and smiles extra wide and tries to pack enough emotion in her life for two people (because she should have died too, not just mama).

He is fifty and asleep in a coffin, dreaming of blood and sin and a beautiful woman (who didn't want him back). He lived when he should have died (just like her) but instead of living he tries to kill himself the best he can, now that he's immortal.

She is ten and being carted around the world by Shinra as they show off their pet Emperor. Rufus is relegated to babysitter and she pulls his hair and steals his wallet and hides in the laundry chute of the hotel and pretends she isn't scared to the bones of the silver haired man she keeps seeing (mama mama don't go please! please please ple-). She has to relocate when a barrel of dirty laundry dislodges her and the women doing the laundry laugh and laugh because she looks like a drowned rat after being knocked into a tub of soapy water.

He is fifty-one and moaning in his sleep as he relives being shot and tortured a million times.

She is eleven and all elbows and knees and love for Wutai and her father is having secret meetings he thinks she doesn't know about. She hides in the room above and listens with an overturned glass. Then she goes to her house (her father can't look her in the face anymore, let alone live with her) and sits in the corner of her bedroom, surrounded by cats and cries for what her country is becoming.

He is fifty-two and Hojo's torture doesn't compare in the slightest to what he does to himself.

She is twelve and newly on a mission, leaving her beloved country to save it. She flits from city to city, stealing everything she can and gives it all to her father, newly scarred arms trembling. "Here," she says. "Take it. Make Wutai great again." And he shakes his head and smiles a little. "It isn't that easy. It isn't enough." So she cuts herself open and bleeds for Wutai, spilling herself on it's sands as an offering and heads back out.

He is fifty-three and no closer to salvation than when he entered the coffin twenty-five years ago.

She is thirteen and all of Wutai rests on her shoulders. She is bruised and broken and has stolen and killed and every month she visits her father and every month her says, "More."

He is fifty-four and dead inside. The demons press against his mind but even they have trouble matching his self-inflicted wounds.

She is fourteen and far too young to seduce men before she knocks them out and robs them blind but she does it anyway. Her methods are clumsy and she is obviously too young but she still succeeds. She feels dirty afterwards and washes herself until her skin is red and raw.

He is fifty-five and he hears the word, "Sorry" repeated like a litany. Sorry for what, he wonders.

She is fifteen and she stops robbing from people in cities and towns because she's starting to get famous. Instead she camps in forests and attacks travelers, ignoring that even if she doesn't kill them the monsters will.

He is fifty-six and what he can feel of the world around him (not much, just a pressure on the back of his mind) makes him dream of spiders covering his skin, thousands of them. He wakes up briefly and stares at the lid of his coffin before going back to sleep.

She is sixteen and isn't alone anymore and she dances through the halls of Shinra Manor because she is The Great Ninja Yuffie and has her lovely back ups Chocobo Head, and Boobs, and the flower girl (sweet, sweet Aeris, why did you have to-) and all the others.

He is fifty-seven and blinking in the light. The blue-eyed man tells him of Sephiroth, of his sins come back to haunt him even though he's atoned. He sees the gray eyed girl draped over the pink one's shoulders and her whole body is smoldering with barely suppressed movement and energy.

She is only half as old as the time he spent asleep in his coffin but she has lived twice as much as he has. And he hates her, irrationally, for what she is able to do and who she is able to be and her ability to not only live but to _thrive_. And she hates him, irrationally, for being such a selfish lazy-bones and his ability to shut himself off (away) completely, which sometimes when she's really, really tired and has bled herself dry for her needy, needy country she kinda-sorta wished she could do the same, but she never ever tells anyone that.

And she's sixteen and panting and trembling with joy because they did it they did it they won and finally, finally she has given enough! Shinra is no more, Wutai can be great agin and she is blessedly, beautifully _alive_ and _gawd_ isn't that the greatest!

And he is fifty-seven and he's atoned, hasn't he? He's destroyed the mutant child he couldn't keep from being born and he'll find a new sin soon enough, but for now, for now he is free and guiltless and alive for the first time in thirty years and _gods_, does it feel good.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

A/N: Did NOT mean to leave this as an in-progress, but for some reason my moral compass will not allow me to just change it to complete without another chapter. So, since I pretty much wrapped everything up in chapter one, this will probably be lower quality. And a totally different style, because while I absolutely love writing meandering, introspective stuff the whole years in one paragraph thing would kill me to do again. So here you go, the scene right at the beginning of DoC, when they're evacuating Midgar.

Aging II

It's a frantic mush of evacuating Midgar and saving Vinnie from his own stupidity on that crumbling tower thing. His arms are tight around her and she's forcing down the nausea for all it's worth, because if she pukes while she's driving this hover thing they'll fall and fall and die SPLAT and as much as Yuffie hates motion sickness she hates splatty death more. So she pulls over to the closest safe ground and throws up in the rubble while Vince looks pensive and emo. (She'll never tell him how jealous she is that he can do that without people asking if he's okay. No one thinks she can be pensive and emo! (though they may be right about that)).

Once she's done emptying the contents of her stomach (including some brown gucky stuff she's sure she didn't eat) she skips over to him, slings her arm around his shoulder and says, "So what's got you so mopey again? We just won, Vinnie McVinsters!"

He grimaces a little and pries her arm off of him and says all low and gravelly, "Saw a ghost."

"Vinnie, Vinnie, Vinnie," she chants, dancing away from him and doing a few punches in the air. "We're AVALANCHE. We kick ghosts butts."

He looks at the ground, then up at her and he forces a tiny little smile (the type she's intimately familiar with, from her father's continued cries of "More."). But still! It's Vinnie, and he's smiling and it's a totally lame-o smile but at least there's the effort, right? Baby steps! (But Yuffie never bothered with baby steps, she just lunged and toppled on chubby toddler legs until she got the habit of staying upright, so why should other people use them?)

And then he says, all low and gravelly, "Yes. You may be right."

And that makes her smile (big and real, because even if he won't, she will) and jump and whoop, because is this really Vincent frigging Valentine, Mopey McEmopants the Third? Is he really maybe moving on? Breakthrough, she wants to scream, so she does.

So she dances up and hugs him (squeezing extra tight when he tries to pull away) and they watch the sky dance green with the Lifestream and she sits next to him on the hover bike thingamajig and thinks about Aeris and it isn't sad thinking like normal it's love and happiness and a smile that glows in her memory.

She gets real quiet, just staring at the river of light and catches him sneaking a few nervous glances, like he's afraid she'll ruin the moment. But she doesn't she just sits and watches, the green light making her golden skin look real weird but at least she doesn't look like a zombie like him. After a while she gets off the bike and lies down on the ground so she doesn't have to tilt her head back so far and that's when she breaks the silence.

"What do you think is happening with everyone else?"

"I have no idea," is his curt reply. Nothing in it invites further conversation so she lets the silence flow back in. Only it isn't silence, not really, because there's the background creak of straining girders, the occasional CRASH as something falls apart. Really far away is the howling of sirens and the calls of the evacuees. Yuffie pushes it all away, enjoying the now, a skill she's perfected over the years and one that Vincent never learned.

A few more minutes and she spots her mothers face in the constantly shifting lines of the Lifestream. Part of her knows it's just her own projections (or is it?) but a bigger part of her wants to do something else before she starts bawling. No one gets to see Yuffie sad, not if she can help it, so she leaps to her feet and lunges at the bike, almost toppling into Vincent's lap in her rush.

He pulls away and she smiles up, hopes the weird light keeps him from seeing the sheen of tears, says, "Let's go find everyone else!"

His lips twitch in a way that means he's wondering once again why he's been stuck with her (and when did she get so proficient in reading Vincents expressions?) and he says, "Where would they be?"

She rolls her eyes. "We could call them on the PHS. That's what it's for, after all."

He looks blank, then reaches for where the PHS is strapped to his belt as she swings her leg over the seat of the hover thing and starts the engine. She hears the murmur of Cloud's voice on the other side, then Vincent says, "Kalm."

She grins, mad and wild and willful and mocking (just like she always does) and says, "Let's mosey!"

Then she guns the gas and they take off, zoom zoom zoom, until her stomach catches up with her and she remembers, oh hey, motion sickness. So they pull over and switch positions and Yuffie throws up over the side for the rest of the trip. She's clinging to his belt to keep from falling off and it is the opposite of romantic (not that Yuffie really wants romance, especially not with Vince).

And after about fifty pukings they get to Kalm and she wobbles her first few steps until she sees everyone waiting for them. Then she runs jumps lands in Tifa's arms and the older woman swings her around laughing.

They're all dirty and worn and at least a little bit injured but everyone is just so damn happy to be alive that they're smiling anyway. Soon they sit down in a circle, Cid bringing out a few beers for all the adults (Yuffie tries to snag one but he slaps her hand away) and they drink and laugh and Cloud looks at them all with a smile in his Mako blue eyes and says, "To Aeris, and Holy!"

And they toast. Then Yuffie stands up, prances around the circle, tugs his blond hair and lifts her own glass of juice and says, "To AVALANCHE!"

And they toast. But before they can drink she says, "To everyone who died, and everyone who lived, and to growing and learning and staying the same and hell, everything else on this wonderful amazing Planet! Even to dragons!"

And they laugh and she plops down on the ground and Cloud ruffles her hair and says, "To survival and hope and seeing another day."

And they toast.

And they toast and they toast and they toast, because, when you're alive when you shouldn't be everything is worth drinking to.


End file.
